“If you find yourself in sorrow,It won’t heal no way.
So don’t you worry ‘bout tomorrow –
It will kill today.
If you don’t mind, if you, if you don’t mind,
I’ll keep you strong, I’ll keep you strong, eh.
If you don’t mind, if you, if you don’t mind,
I’ll keep you strong.
I drown in your grace,
So let me in.
You heal and deface –
I’m wrapped in.
So don’t you care about confusion,
It will gently disappear.
If you find some disillusion,
I’ll softly whisper in your ear,
“If you don’t mind, if you, if you don’t mind,
I’ll keep you strong, I’ll keep you strong, eh.
If you don’t mind, if you, if you don’t mind,
I’ll bring you home.”
I drown in your grace,
So let me in.
You heal and deface –
I’m wrapped in.”
[ Grace – Leandra ]
Back to surrealism with my Morphine series – again the Isomorphine half.
I bet you’re tired of reading it, but once again this is a months-old idea that I kicked myself into doing at long last. I really need some discipline when it comes to self-portraits, because I can’t go on writing down my ideas and waiting so long before developing them. Right, this time most of the stuff I needed was at my mother’s so I couldn’t shoot this photo in Trieste, but I’ve been here for almost two months now and waited until the last week before taking most of this photo – which really sucks on my part. The fact is, I like challenges (and realising this concept was indeed challenging), but tend to procrastinate facing them for as long as I can. See why I haven’t progressed with many of my long-term projects lately.
Anyways, the more surreal I get, the more layered my photos become. Both Mirrors of Decay needed blending a certain amount of photographs together, and so did Grace. After all, people don’t normally float upside-down in the woods like they do underwater, and they don’t usually breathe out soap bubbles; which means that I, my hair, the background and the bubbles are all separate photographs I merged together (I usually don’t reveal these tricks, but denying them would be pointless here).
The symbolism is a pretty direct rendition of the underlying metaphore in the lyrics. I took the idea of drowning in a brightly lit environment (representing “grace”) which is not truly liquid directly from the chorus: I wanted the drowning, but I also wanted it to be metaphorical. And I don’t have an underwater camera anyways. The biggest trick was to make my hair look as if it were really floating, which I downright stole from nDroae and was the primary reason I had to wait to be at my mother’s: I only have a shower in Trieste, not a bathtub. That was the first photo I shot. Since I needed to be there, I decided the background would be the Maria Pia pinewood in Alghero, and I also had my mother blow our brand new Hello Kitty soap bubbles in front of a black background rather than doing all by myself. And here is the final photograph.
But pretty much as always, thank you very much procrastination, for in hindsight the photo came in good time. This time not for purely artistic purposes, but because I actually have someone to dedicate this work and the accompaining song to. You know, as much as I try to be the bitchest of them all, the song is definitely in my character;it’s just been a while since I met someone in real need of psychological support and who’s truly worth the trouble actually no, they weren’t.
Oh, and also: the Hello Kitty soap bubbles are totally my mother’s fault, she bought them. I had a good laugh, but they are not referencing anyone or anything.
Anyways, the more surreal I get, the more layered my photos become. Both Mirrors of Decay needed blending a certain amount of photographs together, and so did Grace. After all, people don’t normally float upside-down in the woods like they do underwater, and they don’t usually breathe out soap bubbles; which means that I, my hair, the background and the bubbles are all separate photographs I merged together (I usually don’t reveal these tricks, but denying them would be pointless here).
The symbolism is a pretty direct rendition of the underlying metaphore in the lyrics. I took the idea of drowning in a brightly lit environment (representing “grace”) which is not truly liquid directly from the chorus: I wanted the drowning, but I also wanted it to be metaphorical. And I don’t have an underwater camera anyways. The biggest trick was to make my hair look as if it were really floating, which I downright stole from nDroae and was the primary reason I had to wait to be at my mother’s: I only have a shower in Trieste, not a bathtub. That was the first photo I shot. Since I needed to be there, I decided the background would be the Maria Pia pinewood in Alghero, and I also had my mother blow our brand new Hello Kitty soap bubbles in front of a black background rather than doing all by myself. And here is the final photograph.
But pretty much as always, thank you very much procrastination, for in hindsight the photo came in good time. This time not for purely artistic purposes, but because I actually have someone to dedicate this work and the accompaining song to. You know, as much as I try to be the bitchest of them all, the song is definitely in my character;
Oh, and also: the Hello Kitty soap bubbles are totally my mother’s fault, she bought them. I had a good laugh, but they are not referencing anyone or anything.
